Senior Design Technology Leader

About Camphomes

Camphomes designs and manufactures luxury teak kit-of-parts homes — precision-engineered, beautifully crafted, and shippable to any site in the world. Co-founded by a capital markets veteran and a master craftsman, the company combines architectural-grade joinery with a manufacturing discipline that is rare in the high-end housing segment. Our current production facility is in Nicaragua; we are planning a new manufacturing plant in Panama.

Our target market is placemaker developers — sophisticated real estate and hospitality operators creating branded residential communities, luxury resorts, eco-lodges, and master-planned destinations who need a premium housing solution they can deploy at scale without compromising quality, story, or craft.

Camphomes is built on a system of three timber frame form factors — 16-foot, 20-foot, and 24-foot — within which each home is semi-custom. That system is the engine of the business: it lets us offer the soul of a custom home with the economics and timeline of a productized one. But the system only works if the design pipeline behind it works. That pipeline is where this role lives.

Why This Role Exists

Every Camphomes project moves through the same sequence: conceptual design, detailed design development, shop drawings, permit sets, and coordination with structural engineering. Today this sequence is a bottleneck. Each semi-custom home requires meaningful design work on top of the underlying form-factor system, and as we move into multi-unit placemaker developments, hospitality portfolios, and global SPEC homebuilder partnerships, the volume of design production required will outrun any traditional studio model.

We are not hiring someone to work harder inside the old model. We are hiring someone to replace it. We believe that a significant portion of the conceptual-to-permit-set pipeline is now automatable — through parametric modeling, template-based generation, AI agents that assemble and check drawing sets, automated structural coordination, and LLM-assisted permit documentation. We want a leader who already sees this future clearly, has begun building toward it, and is hungry to do so at a company where they will have the authority, resources, and partnership to actually make it real.

What You Will Own

1. The Design Pipeline, End to End

• Own the full flow from client brief to permit-ready package across all three Camphomes form factors: 16', 20', and 24' timber frames.
• Conceptual design: translate placemaker, developer, and end-client briefs into Camphomes schemes that honor the system and the brand.
• Detailed design: develop schemes into the full design documentation package.
• Shop drawings: produce the fabrication-ready drawings that drive the factory floor — in tight coordination with the Head of Manufacturing.
• Permit sets: produce jurisdiction-compliant documentation for projects in Nicaragua, Panama, and eventually beyond.
• Structural coordination: manage the interface with external structural engineers to keep the design intent, the structural solution, and the manufacturing reality aligned.

2. The AI-Augmented Design System

• Build the Camphomes design system as software, not just as documents: parametric models of each form factor, configurable modules, automated generation of schematic options, and template-driven documentation.
• Identify every point in the pipeline where an AI agent can replace or accelerate manual work — and build, deploy, and iterate on those agents. Examples may include: conceptual scheme generation from client brief, automated sheet set assembly, clash detection and resolution, drawing annotation and dimensioning, permit package preparation, structural model coordination.
• Set ambitious but honest automation targets. We believe a meaningful share of this pipeline will be 60–80% automatable within 24 months; your job is to figure out which share, in which order, and how to actually deliver it.
• Maintain rigorous quality control over the automated outputs. An AI-generated permit set that is 98% correct is not a win if the 2% error lands us in a construction defect claim. Build the review, validation, and exception-handling systems that make automation trustworthy.

3. Partnership with the Chief Craftsman

• Work as the closest operational partner to the Chief Craftsman (Co-Founder). He sets the standards of craft, material, and finished quality that define Camphomes; you build the system that delivers those standards at volume.
• Co-innovate the process itself. This is not a role where you execute against a fixed spec — it is one where you and the Chief Craftsman together decide what Camphomes design production should look like five years from now, and then build it.
• Protect the soul of the product. The system must scale without sterilizing. Every automation decision gets measured against whether the finished home still feels hand-built.

4. The Team

• Build and lead the Managua-based design team: conceptual designers, production drafters, BIM specialists, and technical reviewers.
• Define roles for a world where agents do much of the drafting and humans do the judgment, the craft decisions, and the exception handling. Hire for that future, not the past.
• Establish a distributed-capable operating model. The team starts in Managua; as systems mature, it should be possible to bring on remote specialists globally — particularly for permit work in new jurisdictions.

What We Are Looking For

Experience

• 10–20 years in architectural practice or architectural technology, with a meaningful share of that time spent on prefab, modular, panelized, or productized housing — or on design technology leadership at a firm serious about computational design.
• Proven track record of productizing a design process — not just using the tools, but reshaping a studio's workflow around them.
• Demonstrable, hands-on experience with AI tools beyond consumer chat: API-level work with Claude, GPT, or similar; experience with or clear understanding of agent frameworks; sense for what is and is not reliably automatable today.
• Experience working on semi-custom-within-a-system housing products — Bensonwood, Unity Homes, Plant Prefab, Dvele, Method Homes, Entekra, Katerra, Sekisui Heim, Daiwa House, or similar — is a strong signal.

Technical Skills

• Deep fluency in Revit and Rhino/Grasshopper; comfort with Dynamo; ability to read and ideally write Python.
• Working knowledge of structural design principles sufficient to have credible conversations with engineers — you do not need to be a structural engineer, but you cannot be mystified by one.
• Experience with BIM-to-fabrication workflows; understanding of how design decisions land on a factory floor.
• Comfort operating at the API layer of modern AI tools; familiarity with Claude, GPT, LangChain, or similar; instincts for prompt engineering, evaluation, and agent orchestration.
• Able to read or write code, ability to use Python an advantage.

Mindset

• Systems thinker. When you see a problem solved manually once, you immediately ask how to solve it automatically for the next 200 times.
• Efficiency-obsessed without being soulless. You know which parts of design should be automated and which parts should be protected.

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• Comfortable with ambiguity. This role has a clear mandate and a largely unwritten playbook.
• Genuinely excited by AI as a design tool — not defensive about it, not hype-driven about it.
• Deeply respects craft and the people who practice it. Our Chief Craftsman is one of the best in the world; the right candidate will feel fortunate to be his partner.

Language and Location

• Spanish fluency preferred; though all work and systems will be carried out in English. The team base is Managua.
• Willingness to be based in or rotate heavily through Managua for at least the first 18–24 months, while the core systems are built. Future remote or distributed configurations are on the table once the engine is running.

How You Will Work With the Founders

You report to the Chief Craftsman and work as a true peer to the Head of Manufacturing. The Chief Craftsman owns product, craft, and finished quality; the Head of Manufacturing owns production and factory operations; you own the design pipeline that connects them. The three of you, together with the CEO, form the operating core of Camphomes.

Compensation and Terms

• Competitive senior-leadership base salary, calibrated to background and base location.
• Meaningful equity participation in Camphomes — this is a bottleneck-breaker role and will be compensated accordingly.
• Performance bonus tied to pipeline throughput, automation milestones, and quality metrics.
• Relocation, housing, and immigration support for expatriate candidates.
• Tooling budget to build the AI-augmented design stack properly.

How to Apply

Please submit a resume or portfolio and a short note (no formal cover letter required) addressing three questions:

• Describe a design or documentation process you personally redesigned — what it looked like before, what it looks like now, and how much faster or better it runs.
• Where in the conceptual-to-permit-set pipeline do you believe AI agents can deliver the most leverage in the next 24 months, and where are the traps?
• How do you think about industrializing a design process without sterilizing the finished product?

Applications and referrals may be directed to Camphomes via BambooHR. All inquiries will be treated confidentially.